Harlequin Rex

by Owen Marshall

  Maybe he can evade the curfew check by Raf, or David, and walk down to his dinghy, launch it into the sound. He imagines trailing his hands in the cold water, cupping one so that he can sip from it and taste not just the variety of salts, but an array of other flavours as subtle yet distinct as a fine bordeaux.

  Tolly’s humming grows louder. He starts to jig a little, and steps into the grounds. What is going on within his territory here at Mahakipawa? What is here for interference, gratification and pain? What are the imperatives rising from deepest parts of his brain to take the helm again? Tolly takes off his shoes and his jersey, which have become too much insulation for him. He needs to feel with his hands and feet. His shirt goes then, although he wasn’t hot before. He needs to have skin open to the world. What? What? What is there for him amid all the jostling possibilities of which his senses are aware? He feels the air moving through the hair of his chest and back, smells his own sweat as he keys up for fight or flight. Fear and threat and pain are strong in Harlequin’s world, but so are vengeance and victory, precedence and power. The millionaire of bathroom fittings begins to jog away into the night. The astronomical commentator baboons to the moon, and does a cartwheel on the scented earth, crushes late flowers to his face. Tolly is well away, following his nose in search of mischief and excitement.

  No harm will come of it — tonight.

  TWENTY–TWO

  In the constant passage of nights and days, no two were quite the same. The world might hinge a little at dawn and dusk, showing something of what was coming and something of what had gone before.

  Privacy is a rare and special blessing within institutions. At the centre there were off-duty times when David would go up the hill behind the grounds and buildings. At gloaming often, when there was a hiatus between sea breeze and shore breeze, and the soft valleys of the hills across the sound were the colour of a bruise as night came on, when the lights of the block windows began to draw the eye, and cattle on the road flat bugled to those on the hill, with the smell of prime, crab-bearing mud, and the spent greens and browns of broom and gorse fading with the light. David felt at those turning points of twilight experience ineffable, something significantly beyond and greater than himself. A message was given then, wasn’t it? But always just out of earshot, or beyond his comprehension.

  Then came the night itself — Harlequin, perhaps, in his original guise. All those who have unleashed heady self-indulgence, breathe more easily in the darkness — murderers, hunters, lovers. Night isn’t the same stage devoid of light, but a whole new play, with those that remain from the cast of day having entirely different roles. Some flowers open only to the moon and consummate with fumbling moths. New paths are used and old ones taken over by fresh populations. The stoat and weasel are about their work; eels flourish on the land amid the dew, mutton-birds fly in from the ocean, wherein creatures of ominous bulk drift towards a darkened surface; the mudbanks wink and glimmer as the crabs use pincers to signal to Tolly’s stars. The land breeze replaces its cousin from the sea. Big eyes are king. The silken possum eats out the heart of the native trees, and the morepork glides and glares above it all.

  A quiet joint beneath an overhang of scrub, quite out of sight of everyone, yet where he’s able to enjoy a far, soft view. It reminded David of times and places at Collegiate and at Paparua, which had privacy as their instigation as well. David’s was a tripartite experience of institutional life: boarding school, prison, and then the Slaven Centre. In some ways antithetical, they were in others disturbingly alike, for there are features of close community which exist in all examples of the form.

  The character of an organisation is like that of an individual, in that each presents an image to the world, gives lip service to some beliefs, professes principles, while the life within is far more complex and volatile: urgencies and priorities never proclaimed are nevertheless served in full, and occupations of little formal title wield subtle power. The Honours Boards record the scholarships and Heads of House: the names of the bullies who ruled the grounds and dorms are cut into the hearts of Old Boys scattered through the adult world.

  At school and Paparua however, David was part of the clientèle. Life was altered at the centre because he was staff. Not an executive like Alst Mousier, not a professionally qualified member of the medical team as was Tony Sheridan, not even the possessor of additional de facto influence like shapely Polly Merhtens who had captivated Dr Hassim. Yet he was staff, and on the other side of the divide from those who bore the stigma of being guests. Guests knew that they were there to get the treatment, as were boys at Collegiate, or the inmates of Paparua.

  There was an irony, wasn’t there, that after that Kaikoura business he was at risk in society at large, and safest in the centre. Who would think of looking for him in the skirts of Harlequin? And maybe he had saved the justice system the cost and effort of putting him out of circulation again, by doing it myself. Incarceration may be a state of mind.

  There is power and satisfaction in seeing without being seen; in watching people when they imagine themselves alone. When no reaction is required of you, the focus of concentration is especially sharp. Just occasionally, when David was sitting on the hillside in old man gorse or broom, smoking some prime West Coast shit, there were pantomimes played out for him in the grounds of the centre.

  There was that fight between two guys behind Weka block, which had a good deal of formality in its shaping up, but just a couple of punches in execution, which left one man sitting and coughing on the evening lawn, while the victor walked back inside. The sitting man stopped coughing after a while, but didn’t get up. In time David went quietly back to his room, taking the long way through the car park, so that he wouldn’t be heard, and leaving the guy sitting in a posture of abnegation as the dusk gathered. Maybe he was coming to terms with his defeat; maybe he had moved on to matters entirely distinct.

  In an evening with more light he watched Melanie Harcourt dancing to her Walkman on the concrete slab in front of Beal’s tractor shed. Melanie was from Titi and recognisable at a distance because she was rather large, yet usually wore the multicoloured tights of Columbine, Harlequin’s mistress. Could she be unaware of the irony in that? Melanie was a surprisingly good back-of-the-court volleyball player. She hadn’t gone to the shed to hide, just happened to be passing when the right tune came on, so she took advantage of the smooth surface. She had the Walkman at her already considerable hip, and the lead to the earphones swung out as she danced. She held up her arms, her head swayed side to side with them: the colours spun on her legs. David couldn’t hear the song, but the rhythm she had going seemed to be the real thing. He found myself smiling, and swaying slightly to synchronise. Go for it, Melanie, wherever you are.

  David knew where Jigger Fraser was — buried in the small headland cemetery at Havelock because the body wasn’t claimed, yet on the low tablet headstone it said he was the much loved father of Jeremy, Blythe and Chelsea. He’d told Lucy that he’d not wanted to have a daughter called Chelsea, that sooner or later there’d be the joke about her having a bun in the oven. Jigger had long hair and a full beard. His hair was ginger blond at the crown and deepened down the length of his head until it had the colour of deep, damp rust. A broad face like that of a lion in a ginger and rock desert.

  Anyway, Jigger had climbed through the fence and well up the hill to find a place among the grass and gorse not far from David’s own, and sat there talking and praying alone. His sandy mane gave him good camouflage. ‘Lord Jesus, take this cup from me,’ Jigger said from some scant, ecclesiastic memory, ‘but nevertheless, not my will, but thine be done.’ Below them a group of people were laughing, and walking from the main block towards Hoiho. There is a jackass quality to laughter in which you have no part. ‘I don’t want to go out like this,’ Jigger told Jesus more colloquially. ‘Not in the grip of this thing. If it please you, Jesus, Chelsea’s only three, and Brenda doesn’t make that much of a mother, because she’s into some
jag about setting up a herb and dried flower shop.’ Jigger held up his clasped hands in entreaty; the posture from soft-cover Sunday school booklets. ‘Just let me be okay again and I’ll be a true believer. I swear it.’

  David never paid his dues as far as religion went, and so he couldn’t in conscience make any prayer to Jesus, but as he listened to Jigger, as the laughter died away among the buildings below them, he felt a fierce joy to be alive, unsentenced, crouched in the gorse and brittle grass.

  ‘I’ll give anything, anything, for the chance,’ said Jigger. He began on a clumsy and inaccurate version of the Lord’s Prayer, growling away like the ginger lion he was. Jigger’s abasement wasn’t meant to be heard by his peers. David would have gone away if that was possible without revealing himself, but he had to wait until Jigger left instead.

  David knew that Jigger was a fitness freak, and the next morning he went to the gym, where Jigger spent an hour on those days he was well enough. After hearing him pray, David felt that he should make some gesture of comfort, or support, without giving the game away. Jigger was working out on the wall bars. Sweat darkened his green singlet: the ginger hair of his armpits gleamed like chutney. His lion’s face hung on the rack above the shifting tendons and long bones of his body. Rather than bestowing grace, physical stress had hobbled him, and he jerked on the rack with grimaces of determination. David invited him to the poker school at Takahe that night, but Jigger’s vehement refusal shook sweat onto David and the smooth wooden floor of the gym. ‘You’re wasting your time,’ Jigger said. ‘I’m not interested in buying any of your shit, see. You’ll have to make your profit elsewhere.’ David hadn’t realised that Jigger disliked him, that he knew of the dope brought in for friends. It happens like that sometimes. You reach out to someone, and you find all along they’ve disliked you, and you’ve given them the opportunity to display their enmity.

  ‘Suit yourself,’ David said. He found it difficult to match up the Jigger who was exercising, with the man praying aloud on the hillside just the night before. Neither prayer, nor physical jerks, did Jigger much good as it turned out. He may well have been happier with some of the hooch he thought David was pushing that day, for surely in just a few months he’d be forgotten at Mahakipawa as he’d been forgotten by his wife and children, and no one would recall his ginger-blond crown, his russet beard, his home-made prayers, his fears of Chelsea’s bun.

  TWENTY–THREE

  Despite all his experience to the contrary, David still sometimes assumed that his decisions had some effect on the world. He had come to start a new life at Mahakipawa, and hoped fortune would respect that. It didn’t, of course, yet he was still surprised when Simon Cryer came to the centre, almost as if Cryer had broken a promise. Cryer had worked in the freight section of Christchurch Airport and had got a lot of stuff up to Hamilton and Auckland, but always at top kickback.

  In the dining hall the staff ate in a section by the windows, reserved more by custom than decree. Lunchtime, and David had finished his meal and was pressing his little finger on the table to see how much inflammation remained from an infection around the nail. He glanced up to see Cryer watching from deeper in the room, eyebrows raised for attention. Cryer was one of those guys of shallow, conventional handsomeness, whose personality soon makes you regard them as plain to ugly. He must have remembered all about the court case and the prison term. What else did he know?

  David waited for the dining hall to clear a bit before going over to Cryer and shaking his hand. ‘Long time no see,’ said Cryer eagerly. ‘God, it’s a small world.’

  ‘Isn’t it.’ Too small, when Cryer could claim a walk-on part without invitation.

  ‘How long’s it been then?’ Cryer’s hair was combed back from his face, and he smoothed it with the palms of both hands as he talked. He smiled, too, and nodded in agreement with himself as he spoke. He told David that he was on sick leave from the airline; that his doctor had insisted he come into the centre for while, when there wasn’t much wrong with him. ‘Phoney bastard doesn’t know shit from clay,’ he said, the tendons showing in his thin wrists as he stroked his hair back. ‘So, Jesus me. Fancy you being on the staff here.’ He smiled at David, wondering what the angle was. ‘You pushing stuff in here, or what?’ he said quietly as they went out.

  ‘No,’ said David. ‘I’ve given all that away. I get a bit in for myself and a few friends, nothing else.’

  ‘Good one. Good one.’ Cryer had no doubt that he was among those friends. ‘I’m in some bloody unit with a Maori bird name,’ he said.

  ‘They’re all bird names. Who are your live-in staff?’

  ‘One’s called Moffat.’

  ‘You’re in Weka then,’ said David. ‘Probably the worst volleyball team in the place.’

  David stopped walking by the covered way to Takahe, to show that he wasn’t going to invite Cryer back to his room. The Cryers of the world reminded David too much of what he feared in himself. A life restricted to physicality. Some animals see only in black and white, while others are allowed a rainbow world. There was a compassion and sanguinity in such as Schweitzer, Abbey, Raf and Lucy, Post Office Bev even, which was quite missing in Cryer.

  ‘You’ll get me some decent West Coast head?’ asked the very plain man.

  ‘Yes, okay.’

  ‘Good one. For old times’ sake, you reckon.’

  ‘Yes,’ said David.

  ‘I guess people here don’t know the things that went wrong for you?’

  ‘I keep it all pretty quiet. It’s over now, and I have to earn a straight living here.’ What else did Cryer know, apart from the dope and prison? Did he know anything about Kaikoura — a small room, a large bed, a lost Gran? ‘A good lurk gone wrong, eh,’ said Cryer, nodding in self-affirmation.

  Tolly came past from the dining hall and stopped, met Cryer and wanted to know how long he’d been at the centre. Cryer began asking questions about Harlequin, but off-handedly, as if he wasn’t worried. He told them about the fits starting, and laughing jags at work, and then beating up television sets in the Riccarton Mall. Some games show was on and a contestant irritated him and he punched out several 26-inch Black Diamond screens before anyone could stop him. ‘Weirdest thing,’ he said. ‘Gave me a buzz at the time.’

  ‘You’ve come to the right place, definitely,’ said Tolly.

  ‘What is it we’ve all got?’ asked Cryer, starting on his hair again. ‘I mean, Jesus, I’m right as rain, and then I hear the frogs fucking talking to me out of the ditches, I can smell a dozen different shampoos on the office girls in the bus, at four in the morning I have to get up and go running like a fucking boy Scout, and my wife says I get over horny. Mind you, with her, a little always went a long way.’

  ‘You’ve come to the right place,’ said Tolly. ‘Not that you’ll get cured, mind you, but you’ll fit right in with the rest of us.’

  ‘I reckon it’s just overwork,’ said Cryer.

  David left them talking about symptoms. No doubt Cryer would tell Tolly and others about knowing him before. Newcomers like to make such reassuring links. David was well down the path when Simon Cryer called out, and David looked back down the walkway with its shade cutting across the lawn. ‘You won’t forget the — you know — stuff, will you?’ shouted Cryer casually.

  David gave a half-weary, half-easy wave before going on, but he wished him elsewhere. Cryer was an unwelcome overlap from his life before the centre. The guy belonged to the freight depot and storerooms of the airport. David could see him clearly, taking the pylon insulators, stock drench, whatever they’d decided to send the stuff up with, and saying, ‘You leave it to me, chief. Just leave it to me.’ He had some purpose there, and was kept in his place by functional responsibility and greed. David wanted him still there among the freight, confident despite his plain face and thin, smoothing hands, but no, Harlequin had coughed him up at the Slaven Centre: some part of David’s living past to die in his present, or future, and endanger him maybe be
fore doing it.

  TOBY’S VIEW

  Detective Senior Sergeant Toby Cook looks out over the police car park at the Nelson headquarters. It’s his day-to-day view from his office on the second floor. Most of the cars are Commodores, or Diamantes, although the newest ones are smaller Nissans, part of a fleet purchase for the South Island. Cook is a bit of a car nut. He drives an Audi: an indulgence that he can afford because of his seniority, and because he isn’t married. Every time Cook sees a car, he makes an involuntary comparison between it and his own, and almost always he’s reassured by the superiority of the silver Audi, which has air-conditioning, air-bags, beacon location/navigation and leather upholstery — not a turbo, though, for Sergeant Cook considers turbos are for boy racers, and hard on maintenance as well.

  But Cook isn’t thinking of cars this morning, even though he holds the car park in sight automatically. He’s thinking about the Slaven Centre at Mahakipawa, and the conversation he had with the superintendent before the latter went over to Blenheim to a meeting on the major fire at the Woodbourne Air Force base. The super had returned from a Wellington conference on Harlequin only days before.

  ‘There’s apprehension about it long term, Toby. No doubt about that,’ the super had said. ‘So of course they’re looking to spill as much responsibility as possible our way. Nothing new in that, of course.’

  ‘No,’ said Cook with the expected smile.